Computing power, as the core productivity driving the rapid development of the digital economy, is propelling the digital transformation of various industries. With applications becoming increasingly diverse, general-purpose servers are facing more complex customization demands. Intel has proposed building a "modular server ecosystem" and, leveraging the Intel® Partner Alliance (IPA), has collaborated with Yiqi Research Institute to jointly launch the open and collaborative Open Common Server Platform (OCSP) community. This initiative aims to flexibly customize high-quality, high-value servers for different customer industry scenarios, driving business optimization and innovation across sectors.
Cloudtop Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Cloudtop") is one of the first companies to participate in the OCSP community and one of the earliest system integrators to collaborate. Cloudtop actively participates in discussions and promotes the formation of standards. Based on the OCSP community's standard specifications, Cloudtop continuously incorporates the latest technologies and innovative designs while ensuring downward compatibility. This approach meets the market competitiveness needs of OEMs, server suppliers, and users in terms of small-batch customization, quality, and cost, collectively building an ecosystem for China's server industry. At the same time, Cloudtop has enriched its product portfolio through practice and now possesses end-to-end capabilities for intelligent computing center construction, from planning, design, implementation, and validation to maintenance. This enables Cloudtop to provide comprehensive one-stop services for intelligent computing projects.
Agile Customization and Delivery of Diverse Products
Adhering to the principles of openness, quality, flexibility, and value, the OCSP community not only provides modular and standardized server design concepts but also defines a series of compatibility and interoperability standards, making the server design and manufacturing process more efficient and flexible. As a new industry collaboration model, the OCSP community accelerates innovation and development in the server industry through the co-creation of standards, communities, and ecosystems.
As one of the earliest members of the community, Cloudtop actively participated in and contributed to the design of the OCSP 2.0 standard during its formulation process, leveraging its market insights and understanding of customer needs. Contributions include the design of the PCIe module above the rear power supply and the Riser fixing method.
Modularization involves standardizing module interfaces. The OCSP community defines servers into six major components and provides open decoupling standards for chassis, power supplies, motherboards, hard drives, fans, and I/O expansion modules. Currently, Cloudtop's entire series of Intel-based servers are developed based on OCSP-compliant motherboards, covering the third, fourth, and fifth generations of Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processor platforms. Development of motherboards for the sixth-generation Xeon processors is underway. Partners can optimize usage by selecting different module combinations based on scenario requirements.
Based on OCSP standards, Cloudtop has designed and mass-produced the 2U dual-socket general-purpose server product R7260 X5 (West Lake). This product supports rich configurations, multi-dimensional software customization (BMC, BIOS, etc.), and agile hardware customization from L3 to L12, offering the following key advantages:
- Rich and flexible configurations: The entire system is based on OCSP standards and implements modular design. Customers can flexibly choose from various front hard drive cages, middle fan modules, middle hard drive/card cages, and rear hard drive/card cages, achieving "transformer-level" flexible configurations.
- Extensive AVL: Compatible with major mainstream operating systems and rich component compatibility.
- High hardware specifications: Industry-leading support for the maximum number of PCIe slots, GPU cards, and hard drives.
- Top-notch software features: Cloudtop CloudBMC, developed based on OpenBMC, offers rich functionalities such as RAID configuration under the BMC interface and 3D visualization of internal server temperatures. The BIOS provides manageability, scalability, maintainability, usability, and serviceability.
- Excellent craftsmanship and reliability: Features such as tool-free disassembly for simplified maintenance, smooth wiring layout, protective coatings on large structural components, and easy-to-carry packaging design.
- Flexible customization: Rich software and hardware customization options with full certification support.
With the best compatibility and maximum openness, Cloudtop delivers more efficient and scalable products and solutions based on the OCSP community. This approach significantly reduces the "reinventing the wheel" problem in server design. Standardized components and interfaces enable rapid iteration and customized production, greatly accelerating the time-to-market for next-generation servers. This helps server suppliers and users significantly reduce costs, connect customer needs, and efficiently support the growing demand for computing infrastructure across industries.
Connecting Needs and Accelerating Smart Applications
Since its establishment, Cloudtop has been deeply involved in fields such as computing, communications, and AI, mastering core technologies and building strong R&D capabilities. The company closely monitors and continuously meets the needs of niche scenarios. Currently, Cloudtop operates two R&D centers in Hangzhou and Beijing, filing dozens of patents annually to drive innovation and breakthroughs in products and technologies. For AI training, inference, and other scenarios, Cloudtop provides more flexible options to support the integration of AI technologies into enterprise applications.
Currently, the R7260 X5 (West Lake) 2U general-purpose server, based on OCSP standards, meets the needs of various niche application scenarios across industries:
- Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning: Supports AI model training, inference, and deployment, accelerating the development and application of AI.
- Scientific Computing: Suitable for research projects requiring large-scale data processing and complex computations, such as weather forecasting, seismic simulations, and genetic research.
- Big Data Processing: Handles massive data storage, analysis, and mining, such as data warehouses and data lakes.
- Network Storage: Provides efficient data access and backup solutions as a large-scale storage solution, ensuring data reliability and security.
- Cloud Computing and Virtualization: Serves as the foundational infrastructure for cloud computing and virtualization platforms, offering robust computing power and scalability to support multiple virtual machines or containers.
The R7260 X5 (West Lake) supports two third-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors and integrates OpenBMC to achieve standardization, scalability, reliability, and security. The BIOS offers faster boot speeds, comprehensive and precise RAS features, and batch import/export of configurations. It supports up to 17 PCIe expansion slots (15 standard slots and 2 OCP slots), 4 FHFL dual-width GPU cards, 14 HHHL single-width GPU cards, 24 3.5-inch hard drives, and 45 2.5-inch hard drives.
Conclusion
With the rapid development of data centers and cloud computing technologies, the server industry is facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. As an open and innovative platform, OCSP provides new momentum and direction for the development of the server industry.
Cloudtop has fully demonstrated the immense potential of OCSP standards in practical applications, building a server product line spanning multiple generations of Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors. It provides OCSP-compliant components and systems, including motherboards, and through personalized development, offers industry-leading storage and GPU expansion capabilities for server suppliers and enterprise users, meeting the demands for computing and storage in the AI era.